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Rationality: The Critical View (Hardcover, 1987 ed.)
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Rationality: The Critical View (Hardcover, 1987 ed.)
Series: Nijhoff International Philosophy Series, 23
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Total price: R5,728
Discovery Miles: 57 280
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In our papers on the rationality of magic, we distinghuished, for
purposes of analysis, three levels of rationality. First and lowest
(rationalitYl) the goal directed action of an agent with given aims
and circumstances, where among his circumstances we included his
knowledge and opinions. On this level the magician's treatment of
illness by incantation is as rational as any traditional doctor's
blood-letting or any modern one's use of anti-biotics. At the
second level (rationalitY2) we add the element of rational thinking
or thinking which obeys some set of explicit rules, a level which
is not found in magic in general, though it is sometimes given to
specific details of magical thinking within the magical
thought-system. It was the late Sir Edward E. Evans-Pritchard who
observed that when considering magic in detail the magician may be
as consistent or critical as anyone else; but when considering
magic in general, or any system of thought in general, the magician
could not be critical or even comprehend the criticism.
Evans-Pritchard went even further: he was sceptical as to whether
it could be done in a truly consistent manner: one cannot be
critical of one's own system, he thought. On this level
(rationalitY2) of discussion we have explained (earlier) why we
prefer to wed Evans Pritchard's view of the magician's capacity for
piece-meal rationality to Sir James Frazer's view that magic in
general is pseudo-rational because it lacks standards of rational
thinking."
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